Firebird - New TI-Nspire emulator

[pimathbrainiac]

Note about the nightlies: They are not signed, so if you have issues with SmartScreen or Norton, like I do on one machine I use, you might not be able to run it. Also it is a static build, so no dlls required (although the qtquick folders have to be there).

[Dream of Omnimaga]

That is good to hear. It should make it easier and faster for Windows users to get the latest version at any time

[Vogtinator]

An experimental emscripten version can be found on https://nspire-emus.github.io/firebird/firebird.html
OS 3.1 boots in around 40 seconds.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

What is emscripten and what is the difference with the regular version?

[Lionel Debroux]

Emscripten is an "LLVM to JS compiler", mainly used to yield JS code from C/C++ source code. IOW, it can provide a way to retarget native code computer programs to running inside browsers.
Back when jsTIfied and Patrick Davidson's TI-68k JS emulator were created, Emscripten wasn't such an usable option. However, by now, Emscripten is the way to have native code emulators which run fast on computers run fast in browsers, too. The manual approach is outdated.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Oh thanks for clarifying. That is definitively useful. I wasn't aware that this existed, probably because it's more recent or mainstream. Is it as fast as regular executables? (I know that jsTIfied tends to lag when I take animated screenshots)

[Vogtinator]

New release: Firebird 1.1

Get it on GitHub!



New features:
* Add new configuration dialog
* Add easier way to manage multiple flash images with Kits
* External LCD window, useful for presentations or saving screen space

Core improvements:
* Emulation of different HW revisions (A, J and W) of CX
* Support boot1 4.0 found in HW-W+ calcs
* Support lcd_compat mode used by ndless
* General speedups for x86_64 and ARM JITs
* Supports CX installer images
* Add headless and emscripten platforms (no binaries, not really that useful)
* Emscripten demo on https://nspire-emus.github.io/firebird/firebird.html

Keypad improvements:
* Add labels to the keypad
* More intuitive keymap for mapping host keyboard to calc keypad
* Touchpad can now be used to move the OS cursor
* Make active area of buttons bigger to make typing with touchscreens easier
* Avoid buttons appearing stuck after hovering with mouse

Misc. / other fixes:
* The 32bit iOS binary detects JIT capability on runtime to avoid crashes
* Some minor bugs fixed, like potential deadlocks in the debugger
* Fix running functions from GDB
* Improve HiDPI scaling
* Mobile UI optimized for tablets in landscape orientation (right- and left-handed mode)
* Add an update-checking feature to the about dialog

Notes:
* The internal format of snapshots changed - firebird will refuse to load snapshots created with an earlier version. 
You can use the old version to save your work to the flash image first.
The macOS version isn't codesigned, so to launch it you may need to either right-click the .app and choose Open*, or simply disable GateKeeper entirely.
* The iOS version is 32-bit only (for now anyway) and is built with JIT (which will disable itself if your device is not jailbroken)
* The Windows version also has a mobile/tablet .exe that may suit those platforms better.

Repo for Arch, Fedora and openSUSE: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3AVogtinator%3Afirebird-emu&package=firebird-emu

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Great update Vogtinator. I was wondering if this was gonna be updated for newer hardware revisions and I'm glad it did

[Vogtinator]

Quick update: v1.1.1 has been released with a small bugfix for touchpad cursor handling.
Previously the handling of dragging (like the graph view) was a bit bad, it should work fine now.

Also, v1.1 has already been downloaded a whopping 268 times (on GitHub, not counting the linux repo) and all releases together 45337 times!

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Wow, that's a lot of downloads! Do you plan to put the most recent stable version on ticalc.org? I forgot if it was there. In any case, I'M glad that people are using it.

[Vogtinator]

Wow, that's a lot of downloads! Do you plan to put the most recent stable version on ticalc.org? I forgot if it was there. In any case, I'M glad that people are using it.

No, I always like to keep binaries at a single place, in this case GitHub. It makes it easier to update it: All links that point to firebird automatically
show the latest release.

[Vogtinator]

Quick update: v1.2 got released with an important bugfix: The snapshot path of kits is no longer ignored!

Great news for iOS users: This version supports the much quicker JIT also on 64bit phones, even if they are not jailbroken!

Download it here

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Wow, that's a lot of downloads! Do you plan to put the most recent stable version on ticalc.org? I forgot if it was there. In any case, I'M glad that people are using it.

No, I always like to keep binaries at a single place, in this case GitHub. It makes it easier to update it: All links that point to firebird automatically
show the latest release.

Ah that's a shame, because ticalc.org is the main TI community hub so it would have gotten extra visibility there. But it's your choice. At least it would be good if @Travis added it to the emulators page if that hasn't been done already and link to the Github page, because there isn't even a single emulator for the Nspire listed there, not even nspire_emu. Even CEmu isn't there.


Also glad to see support for iOS mobile devices even if they are not jailbroken.

[Travis]

Ah that's a shame, because ticalc.org is the main TI community hub so it would have gotten extra visibility there. But it's your choice. At least it would be good if @Travis added it to the emulators page if that hasn't been done already and link to the Github page, because there isn't even a single emulator for the Nspire listed there, not even nspire_emu. Even CEmu isn't there.

Thanks for the mention. The static content is virtually unmaintained right now due to lack of time to research things, so I'm really dependent on people pointing things out to me to change/update on those pages. I'll stick this on the to-do list, and if someone could give me links to the other Nspire emulators, that will be helpful.

[Lionel Debroux]

Well, Firebird is the go-to community Nspire emulator, derived from nspire_emu and ExtendeD's ncubate_emu fork (with GDB support, later reintegrated)
There's an inferior, closed-source emulator derived from the open-source code base, on which his author mostly gave up by now, per his own words. He cannot integrate Firebird's changes anyway, for licensing reasons. ticalc.org definitely doesn't want to advertise for that emulator.