Firebird - New TI-Nspire emulator

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Oh wow, I didn't even know there were dumping tools. IIRC when I first used Nspire_Emu there weren't any. >.<

I'll have to download it to give it a try in case it's less complicated than what I previously used. Thanks Adriweb

[novenary]

Oh wow, I didn't even know there were dumping tools. IIRC when I first used Nspire_Emu there weren't any. >.<

How could you use the emulator then ?

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Didn't the original nspire_emu have command prompt tools built-in that were super-complicated to use? IIRC I tried using them to no avail, so back then someone sent me a copy of the emu with everything set up including a dumped boot 1 and stuff. >.<

[Vogtinator]

New version 0.30 with greatly improved usability!

With more than 120 commits since the previous release, this version contains various new features, improvements and bug fixes.
The main goal was improved usability across all platforms.
There's also a Wiki at https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/Installing-firebird now. And by the way, the license is now GPLv3.

Download:

• Latest release (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS): https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/releases/latest
  
• Repo for Arch and openSUSE: https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3AVogtinator%3Afirebird-emu&package=firebird-emu
  
• Source: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird

New features:

• Suspend and resume to/from snapshot files. Now you don't have to wait for the calc to boot, it's instantly available.
     
• The USB file explorer now supports file dropping, renaming, downloading and creating folders (right-click)
     
• Animated screen-capture (GIF recording)

Mobile UI:

• Android: Properly implement being in background (paused)
     
• More responsive: Fix sidebar buttons and add a toast-based message system
     
• Fix layout of settings page with long filenames
     
• Add labels to the sidebar buttons
     
• iOS: Re-enable landscape mode
     
• Auto-resume
     
• Save button saves flash and takes a snapshot
     
• Support keyboard input (desktop and HW keyboards (untested) only)

Improvements:

• Refine UI: More icons, utilize status bar and wait cursor
     
• More responsive UI: Can restart and resume instantly while in debugger
     
• Slight performance improvements: Load flash with COW and speed up memory access in x86_64 JIT
     
• Ask whether the created flash image should be used after creation
     
• Add "Docks" submenu to show/hide docks
     
• Disable JIT on non-jailbroken iOS devices: No longer two seperate packages
     
• Better/Updated translations
     
• Support of UTF-8 file names/paths on Windows
  
• Misc. code improvements, refactorings, etc.

Bugfixes:

• Make usblink much more reliable
     
• Fix dropping multiple files at once
     
• Fix speed display: Using C++11 std::chrono instead of OS specific functions now
     
• Fix gpsp_nspire: RGB555 not implemented and implement the CPU's behaviour if add changes the PC's lower bits
     
• Fix polydumper: CP15 instruction was not implemented
     
• Fix boot2 going into standby: bad_read_word
     
• Fix some crashes on OS X (compiler bug recently fixed)
     
• Set focus to the LCD on startup: Can type instantly now
     
• Show "In debugger" overlay if GDB is connected
     
• Cut long boot1 and flash filenames in the UI
     
• Fix last keypad row on iOS: Added some padding on the bottom of the keypad to avoid triggering the control center
  
• Not really an actual bugfix, but the license got changed to GPLv3.

Screenshots/Videos:
Linux (video):

Windows:	Android (video):
Mac OS X:	iOS (video):

Planned:

• Using the mobile UI on desktop: Seamless switching, file explorer, etc.
  
• Better debugger integration
  
• Some more performance improvements
  
• Communication with USB devices over libusb

[Dream of Omnimaga]

What was the license before? I recall Nspire Emu being released with no license at all (thus, making it "all rights reserved" by default, according to certain people) so it's always good to release your stuff with a license (and/or preferably under your name, not the name of a company). Also, does the new license override the license of past versions of Firebird Emu?


Animated screen capture is an awesome addition by the way. When the emulation is slowed down, will GIF capture still set the GIF back to 100% emulation speed like WabbitEmu does or will we need to manually speed the GIF back up in VirtualDub or something?

[Vogtinator]

What was the license before? I recall Nspire Emu being released with no license at all (thus, making it "all rights reserved" by default, according to certain people) so it's always good to release your stuff with a license (and/or preferably under your name, not the name of a company). Also, does the new license override the license of past versions of Firebird Emu?

The license was CC, but that wasn't really suited for code, so we changed it to GPLv3. I don't even know whether it's possible to override the license of past work by a license change, AFAIK only new granted rights are possible to be "backported", but I'm not really informed on that topic at all.

Animated screen capture is an awesome addition by the way. When the emulation is slowed down, will GIF capture still set the GIF back to 100% emulation speed like WabbitEmu does or will we need to manually speed the GIF back up in VirtualDub or something?

It always runs at emulation speed and records with 60 / 3 (=20) fps. It's possible to enable turbo_mode and get a 1 hour GIF in a matter of minutes or even seconds...
Sadly GIF doesn't really offer compression, but adding a dependency on ffmpeg or any other lib for supporting proper video formats is quite annoying, as it's needed for building and running on all platfoms...

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Ah I see. I was concerned about past versions because if the past license allowed for example to re-use your code in a commercial product and the new license doesn't, then the person could simply take an older version of Firebird Emu if there's no overriding. Of course if the previous license doesn't allow such stuff then that's not as bad, though.

Does GIF capture only change the updated pixels every frame? That's how some WabbitEmu screenshots ended up being very small. Some GIF capture programs will just make an entire new frame every frame. I am ok with both, but for the former it would be good to know so that CW admins keep an eye on 100 MB large screenshots in posts/signatures/avatars.

[Vogtinator]

Of course if the previous license doesn't allow such stuff then that's not as bad, though.

I'm not even sure whether it allowed using parts of the code at all, it's a bit hard to argue with a license that was made for artwork about software and source code...

Does GIF capture only change the updated pixels every frame? That's how some WabbitEmu screenshots ended up being very small. Some GIF capture programs will just make an entire new frame every frame. I am ok with both, but for the former it would be good to know so that CW admins keep an eye on 100 MB large screenshots in posts/signatures/avatars.

Nope, https://github.com/ginsweater/gif-h/blob/master/gif.h#L801
For a 20fps GIF it's not that bad, a static image for around three minutes is 5 MiB.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Nice then. I remember some complex WabbitEmu screenshots took about 5 MB for just 30 seconds at 27 FPS, although simpler ones (especially pure BASIC games) took less than 100 KB.

[Legimet]

I've been compiling from master for a while now, and Firebird works very well at this point
If you're still using the old nspire_emu, you should definitely try it.

I don't even know whether it's possible to override the license of past work by a license change, AFAIK only new granted rights are possible to be "backported", but I'm not really informed on that topic at all.

Yeah, at least the CC licences and the GPL are explicitly irrevocable.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

My only issue is that even with help, I never was able to get Nspire Emu to work properly on my own in the past, mainly acquiring Boot1, thanks in part to Nspire Emu dumping tools being command line-based. I had to get someone to set the folder up for me. I wonder if Firebird Emu makes it easier?

[Vogtinator]

Firebird does not require any command line, it is fully GUI-based (except for the built-in debugger).

[Legimet]

My only issue is that even with help, I never was able to get Nspire Emu to work properly on my own in the past, mainly acquiring Boot1, thanks in part to Nspire Emu dumping tools being command line-based. I had to get someone to set the folder up for me. I wonder if Firebird Emu makes it easier?

Setting it up is very easy:


You still need boot1, but you can get that using Polydumper.

There's also a guide here: https://github.com/nspire-emus/firebird/wiki/First-Time-Setup

[Dream of Omnimaga]

That's good to see this emulator improves that. Also yeah I always forget about Polydumper because I don't think it existed when Nspire Emu came out, or I forgot.

Thanks

[Vogtinator]

Thanks to pimath, nightly builds for Windows are available here!